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Premises Of Post-Objectivism

MRS LOGIC AND THE LAW:

A Critique of Ayn Rand's View of Government

INTRODUCTION

In November, 1997, the Internet discussion group "Objectivism L",
co-ordinated by Kirez Korgan at Cornell, began a "Great
Anarcho-Capitalist Debate" with the intention of thoroughly airing,
if not necessarily deciding, the issue of whether a government is
necessary to protect individual rights. Participants in the debate
included well-known Libertarian or Objectivist personalities such as
George H. Smith, David Friedman, David Ross and Chris
Sciabarra.(1)

Naturally enough, the ideas of Ayn Rand featured extensively in the
discussions, and since it could be claimed that Rand started the
debate back in the Sixties, I thought it might be timely to take a
close look at her thinking about government. Another reason for
doing so is the current upsurge of interest in Rand's work,
highlighted recently by an Oscar nomination for the documentary
Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life. This last, by all accounts - I
have not seen it - presents Rand's thought as totally consistent.
Because I dispute that view, and because I now hold that government
is not necessary to protect rights, my 'close look' amounts to a
fairly detailed critique.

Several of the topics I cover will be familiar to most Libertarians,
and/or Objectivists, they may even be 'old hat.' However, I have not
seen them discussed alongside my other material and, as my essay
would be incomplete without them, I thought they should be included.
Other issues covered here I have either not seen elsewhere, or have
not seen directed at Rand, so I hope there will be enough original
observations in these pages to compensate for the familiar ones.

In concentrating my fire on Rand, I am very conscious that other
thinkers, some of whom she inspired, have put the case for limited
government - or have advanced arguments against anarchism - far more
extensively, persuasively or learnedly than Rand herself. I think
particularly of John Hospers, Robert Nozick and Tibor Machan.
However, it is not my intention to be exhaustive. Rand remains the
prime source for one side of the anarchy/minarchy debate and much of
what I say in criticism of her may be applied equally to any
proposal for monopoly government, whoever advances it. Besides, the
authors just mentioned deserve far more attention than I could give
them in an essay of this length.(2)

A note on semantics: I use 'force' to mean initiated violence or the
threat of it. By 'state' I mean a permanent institution, by
'government' its current personnel; but I tend to use the terms
interchangeably to refer to any group of people claiming exclusive
authority to make and enforce rules of conduct in a given
geographical area. 'Monopoly' refers to activities made exclusive by
state-initiated force.

Finally, my criticism of Ayn Rand implies no disrespect. Despite
some reservations, I still think her novels and philosophy are
magnificent achievements.

ONE: LOGICAL PROBLEMS

To set the stage, I shall begin with a brief presentation of what I
consider to be the essence of Rand's politics. This will also serve
as a reminder of how she herself expressed the ideas I intend to
criticise.

A. Rand on Government

For Ayn Rand, the sole purpose of government is to protect rights.
This idea was elaborated, forcefully but briefly, in a single essay,
"The Nature of Government"(3), first published in 1963, in which
Rand argued for a government monopoly on the use of force,
and against anarchism.

Her exposition began with the sine qua non of individual
rights: "the basic social principle without which no moral or
civilized society is possible" [108]. She then proceeded to the
non-initiation of force, Rand being the first philosopher fully to
enunciate this vital principle: "The precondition of a civilized
society is the barring of physical force from social relationships
.... In a civilized society force may be used only in retaliation
and only against those who initiate its use" [108].

Consistent with her devotion to objectivity, Rand related the
necessity of government to a necessity for objective law: "The use
of physical force - even its retaliatory use - cannot be left at the
discretion of individual citizens" [108]. "If physical force is to
be barred from social relationships, men need an institution charged
with protecting their rights under an objective code of
rules" [109].

To achieve this objectivity, and to prevent unwarranted use of
force, Rand held that government had to be a monopoly: "a government
holds a monopoly on the legal use of physical force. It has to hold
a monopoly, since it is the agent of restraining and combatting the
use of force" [109]. By 'monopoly' Rand meant coercive monopoly, not
'sole producer.' Government "holds the exclusive right to
enforce certain rules of social conduct" her essay begins
[107, italics in the original].

Following Locke, and the Founding Fathers of her adopted country,
Rand held that government was justified if based on consent: "The
source of the government's authority is 'the consent of the
governed'" [110]. However, Rand did not allow any choice in the
matter: "There is only one basic principle to which an individual
must consent if he wishes to live in an a free, civilized
society: the principle of renouncing the use of physical force and
delegating to the government his right of physical
self-defense" [110, italics added].

Rand was vehement in her rejection of anarchy: "Anarchy, as a
political concept, is a naive floating abstraction ... a society
without an organised government would be at the mercy of the first
criminal who came along .... even a society whose every member were
fully rational and faultlessly moral, could not function in a state
of anarchy; it is the need of objective laws and of an
arbiter for honest disagreements among men that necessitates the
establishment of a government."

She was equally caustic in her dismissal of anarcho-capitalism: "A
recent variant of anarchistic theory... is a weird absurdity called
'competing governments'" [112]; "this theory ... is obviously devoid
of any understanding of the terms 'competition' and 'government'"
[113].

Finally, Rand was fully cognizant of the dangers of a state monopoly
on force. Government had to be "rigidly defined, delimited and
circumscribed" [109] and its activities strictly confined to police,
armed forces and law courts [112]. She was a great admirer of the
original American constitution, whose system of checks and balances
was an "incomparable achievement ... the concept of a constitution
as a means of limiting and restricting the power of the government"
[114].

In sum, Rand saw government as essential to protect rights. However,
to achieve this end, it was equally essential to protect rights from
government.

B. The Conflict with Individual Rights

Rand argued for a state monopoly on the use of force.(4) Yet the
establishment of a state monopoly automatically involves an
initiation of force, something which Rand asserted must be
barred from civilized society: a state monopoly is by its nature
restrictive and coercive.

Further, a state monopoly is absolute, it permits no competition.
Elsewhere, however, Rand maintained that the right to liberty is
inalienable, i.e. absolute: "inalienable means that which we may not
take away, suspend, infringe, restrict or violate - not ever, not at
any time, not for any purpose whatsoever."(5)

But an inalienable right to liberty would imply that citizens were
free to set up their own systems of rights protection. Evidently
then, if a state monopoly is established, the state immediately
comes into conflict with the inalienable rights it is supposed to
protect.

Many Libertarians have pointed to this or related problems. The late
Roy Childs, for example, wrote an "Open Letter" to Ayn Rand in 1969
asserting that her conception of limited government was
self-contradictory: "a limited government must either initiate force
or cease being a government ... the very concept ... is an
unsuccessful attempt to integrate two contradictory elements:
statism and voluntarism."(6)

Rand riposted, if I recall correctly, by saying that Child's
alternative idea of free market anarchism - purely voluntary society
- was nonsense; there just had to be a'monopoly on the use
of force'. To my knowledge, she never denied the contradiction
Childs had pointed out.(7) Rather, she appeared to imply that it was
a paradox: something which only seemed contradictory, and
then only to the uninitiated; the wise accepted a coercive monopoly
on coercion as unavoidable.

Locke, Paine, Jefferson and other Enlightenment thinkers certainly
accepted this inevitability. Mankind had 'fallen'; government was a
badge of lost innocence, a necessary evil. Yet a 'necessary evil' is
at best an oxymoron, self-contradictory for literary effect. One
could not have an actual 'necessary evil'. That would be a
true contradiction, and contradictions cannot exist, as Rand so
often reminded us.

The central, insuperable difficulty faced by Rand's exposition, as
by any defense of monopoly government, is that coercive monopoly
conflicts with freedom. If humans as individuals have an inalienable
right to liberty, no person or group can have or acquire the right
to curtail that liberty. The issue is entirely straightforward.
There is nothing obscure or problematic about it: a state monopoly
on law and law enforcement simply cannot be established or
maintained without immediately infringing the liberty of any citizen
who might wish to offer, or to employ, alternative forms of
protection or arbitration.

Contradictions cannot exist. We must check our premises. Either the
concept of an inalienable right to liberty, or the concept of a
monopoly state, is false. One or the other has to be abandoned.

C. The End Justifies The Means?

Rand's thinking in support of monopoly government appears to be
along these lines:

f) Coercive monopolies are per se wrong, but this monopoly
is permissible because it is the only way to achieve the objective
law necessary to protect rights.

g) To ensure rights are in fact protected, the state monopoly on the
use of force will be retaliatory only, and will be rigorously
controlled by a constitution.

h) Because our end is good, and our means constitutionally
controlled, we can live with something which is, in all other
circumstances, evil.

The problem is, this argument is no different from (e.g.): "We are
elected to protect liberty. The enemy is at the gates. We have
insufficient troops. To protect liberty we must conscript." But one
cannot defend liberty by destroying it. The contradiction is
blatant. If an action is morally wrong, it does not become morally
right by being carried out for a good purpose. A is A, not B; there
is no logical connection between them. Thus, if my analysis is
correct, Rand's politics are vitiated by an 'end justifies means'
argument.

In a private letter disputing my criticisms of Rand, the late Dr
Ronald Merrill stated that "government is morally justified because
it protects rights."(8) Even taking into account the informal source
of this proposition - it might have been phrased differently in a
book - it does seem clear that the statement merely repeats the 'end
justifies means' pattern of argument outlined above, only in
different terms and much more succinctly.

For if 'government' in Dr Merrill's proposition refers to 'a
monopoly on the use of force,' my earlier objection stands: the
establishment of such a monopoly would itself initiate force. A
government monopoly not only breaches individual rights - by
eliminating liberty of choice - it also conflicts with Rand's
principle of barring force from social relations: a state monopoly,
to be a monopoly, must be both absolute and enforced. It is
therefore, by its very nature, coercive.

With due respect to Dr Merrill, it seems evident that to say
"government is justified because it protects rights" is merely to
sidestep the crucial issue of the initiation of force entailed by a
state monopoly. Although intended to be reasonable and just, the
assertion attempts to deflect attention from the state's
prior breach of morality by pointing to the state's moral
end of protecting rights. Ergo, the proposition rests on
the false assumption that an end can justify the means used to
attain it.

D. The Ad Hominem Attack on Anarchism

When I reread Rand's essay on government after many years, I was
dismayed to notice that most of her critique of anarchism consisted
of ad hominem arguments. She neither presented the case for
anarchism nor criticised the reasoning behind it. Rather, she simply
asserted that anarchism is a "naive floating abstraction" or an
"unthinking protest," whose variant, "a weird absurdity called
'competing governments'" is "befuddling some of the younger
advocates of freedom" despite being "obviously devoid of any
understanding of the terms 'competition' and 'government'" and
"devoid of any contact with or reference to reality..." [VOS
112-3].(9)

Rand's only approach to an actual critique of anarchism consisted of
an unsupported, Hobbesian assertion that "a society without an
organised government" would be precipitated "into the chaos of gang
warfare" [112], and an equally unsupported allegation that
"competing governments" would not be able to resolve jurisdictional
disputes: "You take it from there" she concluded ominously [113].

Despite the vigour of Rand's protestations, it hardly needs to be
stated that ad hominem arguments are fallacious, and that mere
assertion, unsupported by evidence or argumentation, is
philosophically unconvincing - even when it comes from Ayn Rand. Any
dispassionate observer would have to admit that Rand's attack on
anarchism establishes nothing.(10)

Writing in her own journal to presumed supporters (the essay first
appeared in The Objectivist Newsletter), it seems clear
that Rand - possibly in a hurry to make a deadline - was confident
that her authority would carry the day, as indeed it has with many
Objectivists, and that the forcefulness of her remarks would
overcome doubts. Who in the youthful Objectivist movement would want
to be known as 'naive, unthinking, and devoid of understanding'?

Certainly, Leonard Peikoff, leader of the 'official' Objectivists,
has followed exactly the same formula as Rand in his published
discussion of anarchism: anarchists are "foolish" and a lot else
besides.(11)

However, one does not need much knowledge of philosophy to be aware
that appeals to authority are as fallacious as ad hominem arguments,
and so are attempts to intimidate, if indeed that is what we are
faced with. Rand herself wrote a fine warning against the latter,
"The Argument from Intimidation," which concludes The Virtue of
Selfishness.

E. Rand's Circular Argument

Rand maintained that "a government holds a monopoly on the legal use
of physical force. It has to hold a monopoly, since it is the agent
of restraining and combating the use of force" [VOS 109].

This seems to me completely circular. 'A government holds a monopoly
on force. It must hold a monopoly because it is
the agent - i.e. the sole agent - for combatting the use of
force.' Which is to say that it is a monopoly and has to be a
monopoly because it is a monopoly.

I had to go over this passage several times to be sure I was reading
it correctly. It was disturbing to come across such blatant
question-begging in an essay by 'Mrs Logic.'(12)

F. The Hasty Generalisations of 'Consent'

Rand spoke of the authority of government being derived from the
'consent of the governed.' Again, many Libertarians have asked: what
of those who have not consented? For example, consent for
the US federal Constitution was last sought in AD 1787. What of all
the generations since?

Obviously, there is some degree of consent to government,
otherwise it would not exist: it has the sanction of its victims.
But if consent is the basis of government authority,
government can have no authority over those who have not
consented.

The point was famously made in 1850 by Herbert Spencer, who wrote
powerfully and convincingly about "the right to ignore the state" -
if one had not consented to it.(13) Twenty years later, the case was
made even more forcefully by Lysander Spooner in his fiery pamphlet
No Treason, a devastating refutation of any consensual or
contractual obligations supposedly created by the US
Constitution.

Spooner noted, among many other things, that owing first to property
qualifications, next to the disenfranchisement of women, Negroes and
others, probably not more than 1/10th of the population, perhaps
less than 1/20th, were even permitted to vote in the
elections which created the US federal government;(14) and even then
only a politically active minority of eligible voters would in
fact have voted.

These points were confirmed by the 1824 presidential election, the
first for which there are reliable records, when only 350,000 out of
a population of some 11 millions actually voted, a mere 3.2%.(15)
Yet, despite its pitiably fragile foundations, the US Constitution
and the political reality it has spawned have been held up to the
rest of the world for 200 years as the archetype of government
by consent!

Rand's consent argument might be stronger if universal consent were
demonstrated to exist, but it never has been and almost certainly
never could be. Most states therefore rely entirely on 'majority
rule' - or some semblance of it. But 'majorities' are only
presumed to consent to government. Further, they seldom
amount to more than one third of the population. Besides, according
to the consent argument itself, majorities still have no right to
appoint rulers, or to rule themselves, over those who have not
consented.

Some advocates of a state monopoly on force maintain that mere
residence in a country implies tacit consent to the
authority of its government. But what exactly is 'tacit consent'?
Who defines it? Who measures it? Who proves its existence? It seems
odd for upholders of 'objective law' to rely on something so
nebulous and subjective.

It is also self-evident that individuals born into a society of many
millions cannot possibly by themselves change the governmental
structure of that society. Nature imposes an obligation upon all
humans to live somewhere, and the vast majority choose to stay in
familiar territory. But to assert that residing in the country of
one's birth implies tacit consent to its form of government - which
one did not create, and has no power to change - is to leap way past
the evidence.(16) The notion seems little more than a
rationalisation for the status quo.

Even if it were true that people did tacitly consent to the state's
existence, and to the authority of particular administrations to
make law, this would not imply that the same people tacitly
consented to the laws which that government did make. Even if one
approves of the system of supposedly delegated authority upon which
most Western governments depend, one may all too easily disapprove
of what one's government does.

For example, many of those who voted for British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher heartily objected to her signing away British
sovereignty to the European Community. Similarly, while Thatcher's
supporters applauded her repeal of foreign exchange controls, many
bitterly opposed her imposition of insider trading laws and the
other gross economic interventions of her years in power.

While it is probable that a sense of powerlessness or an unthinking
inertia lead most people to accept things as they find them,
acquiescence is not at all the same thing as consent.(17) In any
case, one cannot base a political theory on unproven suppositions.
Who can tell what the answer to an actual question - "Do you
consent?" - might be?

What is more significant is the bottom line: if government authority
does indeed rest upon consent, government can have no authority over
those have not consented.

G. The Root Non Sequitur - from Rights to State

I am not the first to question Rand's uncritical dependence on the
invalid 'consent of the governed' premise. Peter Saint-André, for
example, pointed to the problem in a thought-provoking article in
1997.(18) He also criticised two other Randian assertions: that in a
civilized society one must delegate one's right of self-defense to
government, and that the use of retaliatory force may not be left to
individuals, both notions being just as suspect as government by
consent. For it has always been obvious that people faced with
muggers on the street, or intruders in their homes, are free to
defend themselves and their property as best they can; in no
possible way could it reasonably be asserted that by living in
society people forswear the use of defensive force. According to
John Locke, one has the right to kill in such circumstances, even if
only threatened by the wrongdoer.(19)

Rand might possibly have said that it is the exercise of
the right of self-defense which is granted to government, not the
right itself, but even that would assert too much. In defending
oneself when government protection is not at hand one is exercising
one's right.

What Rand should have said is that dedication to a life of reason
automatically commits one to persuasion - and thus to a self-imposed
prohibition on initiating the use of force. But leading a moral life
does not diminish either one's right of self-defense or its clear
implication, the right to retaliate. As long as one has the former,
one may do the latter, either oneself or, more wisely and if
possible, through a dispassionate third-party.

Yet there are greater problems with Rand's position than the ones
dealt with by Saint-André. For the self-restraint just
referred to says nothing in support of government, and
nothing to endorse a government monopoly on the use of
force.

Throughout history, reasonable people have recognised that emotion
can upset judgment and that one is usually best advised not to be a
judge in one's own cause. But the value of arbitration and of third
party defenders emphatically does not, and logically can not, imply
a state monopoly, nor imply any obligation to
delegate a vital right to the state.

The limited government case advanced by Ayn Rand, and of course long
ago by John Locke, rests heavily on the logical fallacy of non
sequitur. Locke, for example, in paragraphs 87-89 of the Second
Treatise, simply slips in the notion of a state monopoly on law
and justice almost by legerdemain: "the Commonwealth comes by a
power" [para. 88]. Yet no matter how clearly people recognise the
need for protection and arbitration, that recognition cannot
possibly justify monopolization of those needs by a
self-perpetuating institution imposed on society by force. The non
sequitur is transparent. There are not now, and never have been, any
necessary, essential or logical links between self-defense
or justice and a state monopoly on law.

TWO: HISTORICAL PROBLEMS

Logical flaws hardly exhaust the problems with Rand's politics.
Another egregious error is her failure to consider relevant
historical facts. It is unfortunate that when she first started to
think about politics she did not ask herself the same profound
question she asked about ethics, ("Does man need values ... and
why?" [VOS 13]); i.e., does man need a state, and why? Instead, she
set out to defend a "new conception of the State".(20) Assuming the
primacy of the state from the very beginning, she overlooked one of
the most important questions in political philosophy: where did the
state come from?

A. The Origins of Government

Aristotle said "the fact is the starting point,"(21) and the most
significant historical fact about states concerns their origins.
There are currently some 200 or 300 states in the world, all with
exclusive jurisdiction over a specific area. They have many
differences, but one thing they all have in common was noted
succinctly by Herbert Spencer: "Government is begotten of aggression
and by aggression."(22) All states were originally established
by force.

In his detailed account of state origins, Franz Oppenheimer wrote:
"The State ... is a social institution forced by a victorious group
of men on a defeated group ... [for] no other purpose than the
economic exploitation of the vanquished by the victors. No primitive
State known to history originated in any other manner."(23)

Oppenheimer's judgment was later confirmed by Rand's near
contemporary, Albert Jay Nock: "The positive testimony of history is
that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and
confiscation."(24)

Once in power, governments or states have sought to legitimise their
authority by appeals to grand-sounding conceptions such as Divine
Right, the General Will, the Spirit of the Times, or Manifest
Destiny; and have perpetuated their rule by such means as military
might, various forms of election and, in particular, by creating
dependants.

In all cases, the state's exclusive jurisdiction has been and is
enforced.(25) No competition is permitted in the core areas
the original group arrogated unto itself - at the minimum war-making
and taxation - or in later areas of involvement such as law-making,
law enforcement and money; any competition being eliminated by force
or the threat of it.

The origins of states were well known to the American
revolutionaries so admired by Rand. Tom Paine, for example, famously
depicted the creation of the British state: "A French bastard
landing with an armed banditti, and establishing himself king of
England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very
paltry rascally original."(26)

However, historical knowledge did not inhibit the revolutionaries
from following the precedent set by William the Conqueror. We have
already seen that only a very small, politically active minority was
involved in setting up the United States. More significant, perhaps,
is the fact that the citizens of the Thirteen Colonies were never
offered a choice between a central government or none, but only
between English or American government.(27) In fact, the citizens'
consent hardly mattered. As Josiah Tucker complained bitterly at the
time: "did, or doth any of their Congresses, general or provincial,
admit of that fundamental Maxim of Mr. Locke, that every Man has an
unalienable Right to obey no other Laws, but those of his
own making? No; no; -so far from it, that there are dreadful Fines
and Confiscations, Imprisonments, and even Death made use of, as the
only effectual Means for obtaining that Unanimity of Sentiment so
much boasted of by these new-fangled Republicans, and so little
practiced."(28)

Once securely in place, the United States government thereafter
conformed to the practice of all states by enforcing its
exclusive jurisdiction. Any threat to its monopoly on power has been
promptly and ruthlessly crushed; whether during Shays Rebellion or
the Civil War, at Wounded Knee or Waco. (The native inhabitants,
whose free way of life presented an especially serious threat to the
American state, were dealt most ruthlessly of all, being driven from
their lands by the US Army and wherever possible, massacred. The US
government's deliberate policy of genocide against native Americans
is well documented).(29)

It is not possible to deny these two facts: 1) there exists in all
countries a social condition in which force was at some point in the
past initiated against the rest of the society by the group which
created the state; and 2) force has invariably been used ever since
to perpetuate the state's exclusive jurisdiction. The present world
order thus flatly contradicts Ayn Rand's assertion that "The
precondition of a civilized society is the barring of physical force
from social relationships" [VOS 108].

The significance of all this, as George H. Smith has pointed out, is
that the coercive origins of government "block the most popular
method of justifying the present State: consent theory. If the State
originated in conquest and usurpation, it is clear that its
citizens, those who are exploited by those who control the political
machinery of the State, did not, and would not
consent to be so exploited."(30)

We have already seen that on purely logical grounds consent theory
is of very limited value. Had Rand taken time to consider the
historical facts, she must surely have realised that 'consent' is no
argument for government at all.

B. Gang Warfare?

Rand maintained, with Hobbes,(31) that the absence of a government
monopoly on force would precipitate gang warfare: "a society without
an organised government would be at the mercy of the first criminal
who came along and who would precipitate it into the chaos of gang
warfare" [VOS 112]. Yet the historical and ethnographic record, much
of it published before or during Rand's intellectual lifetime,
belies this assumption emphatically.

While a single negative instance suffices to invalidate a universal
affirmative proposition, there are literally thousands of
examples of societies the world over - from primitive forest
dwellers to miners in the Old West - all of whom recognised
individual rights and worked out methods for protecting them, and
for resolving disputes, without recourse either to gang warfare or
to monopoly government.

What these societies had in common was customary law:
voluntary, usually unwritten codes which evolved over time through
trial and error, yet which were willingly and near universally
obeyed, often for centuries on end, because they were
practical, and because it was in every individual's
self-interest to do so. Let us look briefly at some
examples.

Herbert Spencer told us, for instance, about the "utterly
uncivilized Wood Veddahs" on the island of Ceylon, who were "without
any social organisation at all," yet who thought it "perfectly
inconceivable that any person should ever take what doesn't belong
to him, or strike his fellow, or say anything that is
untrue."(32)

In the Americas, French ethnographer Pierre Clastres has pointed to
the great personal freedom and contentment of the stateless
aborigines who, when one peels away the European prejudice that saw
them as primitive, were actually healthier, wealthier and in many
ways wiser than those who conquered or annihilated them.
For example, according to Clastres, the mutilation that marked entry
into manhood in many tribes was deliberately devised to prevent the
development of tyranny: "Archaic societies, societies of the mark,
are societies without a State, societies against the State.
The mark on the body [mutilation scars], on all bodies alike,
declares: You will not have the desire for power; you will not
have the desire for submission..."(33)

In Europe and the Middle East, Rose Wilder Lane has reminded us
(even if she does exaggerate a bit) that while Europeans were
enduring the 'Dark Ages,' a great Moorish civilization stretched in
a shining crescent around the Mediterranean; largely anarchical -
there was no state provision of justice or policing - yet educated,
scientific, clean, healthy, free and prosperous for nearly a
millennium.(34) It was the Moors, or Saracens, who introduced modern
Europe to Aristotle, and also to astronomy, modern medicine,
geography and other sciences.

David Friedman has shown us the freedom-loving and - the sagas
notwithstanding - usually peaceful Icelanders, who lived on their
isolated island in complete anarchy for centuries until overwhelmed
by the Norwegian state.(35)

Murray Rothbard drew our attention to medieval Ireland, "a highly
complex society... the most advanced, most scholarly, and most
civilized in all of Western Europe" where there was "no trace of
State-administered justice" and where customary law held sway for
1000 years, until destroyed by the English state.(36)

Coming closer to our own times, Bruce Benson has reported on recent
studies of the American 'Wild West' which show that its supposed
'lawlessness' before the arrival of government was in fact the
opposite: "some long-cherished notions about violence, lawlessness
and justice in the Old West ... are nothing more than myth."(37)
Most Westerners were far too busy trying to survive or get rich to
be fighting each other.

What the 'Wild West' more often provided were examples of the
spontaneous generation of customary law: universally accepted,
efficient, cheap, and usually a lot more just than the state law
which eventually superseded it. Far from lawless, Western settlers,
ranchers and miners were as law-abiding as any people in history:
"Doors were not locked."(38) Here again, the heart of the matter was
simple self-interest. In the trenchant words of Eric Hoffer: "Those
who have something worth fighting for, do not want to fight."(39)

Dr Benson also pointed to marked likenesses between the customary
law of primitive societies and that of early medieval Europe. He
refers, for example to the Kapauku of New Guinea, who were described
by an anthropologist in the 1950s. Like all 'primitive' societies
the Kapauku had no government, yet enjoyed a thriving culture based
on individual rights. Protection was provided by kinship groups, and
arbitration by competing judges called tonowi.(40) The
similarity between the customary, state-less law of the Kapauku and
that of Anglo-Saxon England is striking.(41)

Much may also be learned from the northern Iroquoian peoples, some
of whose descendants lived on Rand's doorstep in New York State. The
Seneca, Mohawk and their confederates, and the Hurons in Ontario,
had existed as cohesive societies without government for centuries
prior to the arrival of Europeans. Their secret was a true freedom
involving genuine equality and consent. Among the Huron, "No man
could be expected to be bound by a decision to which he had not
willingly given his consent."(42) Among Iroquoians generally, "The
implementation of the decisions of ... councils required securing
the consent of all those involved, since no Iroquoian had the right
to commit another to a course of action against his will." Far from
a war of all against all, Iroquoian society was characterised by "a
respect for individual dignity and a sense of self-reliance, which
resulted in individuals rarely quarrelling openly with one another."
It was also marked by "politeness and hospitality to fellow
villagers and to strangers" and by "the kindness and respect they
showed towards children."(43)

Even Jesuit missionaries, who were appalled by various aspects of
Huron life, such as their sexual 'licence,' freely acknowledged the
cooperativeness and tranquillity of Huron communities - in which
thousands of people lived closely together in conditions of
considerable discomfort. Jean Brébeuf SJ, for example,
writing in the 1640s, commented at length on the "love and unity"
that existed among the Hurons and "their kindness towards each
other" even in times of great stress.(44) A hundred years later,
Pierre Charlevoix SJ confirmed the "harmony" which characterised the
domestic and community life of the many interior tribes he
visited.(45)

It is true that the Iroquoians engaged in constant inter-tribal
warfare, but this was waged for vengeance, prestige and to obtain
victims for sacrifice, not for conquest. Their wars were thus quite
unlike European wars, which were launched for territorial gain and
for the exploitation of subject peoples. The origins of most
Iroquoian conflicts were ancient blood feuds, but the futility of
these had become well recognised. The main purposes of Huron
confederacy councils were to "prevent disputes between members of
different [Huron] tribes from disrupting ... unity" and to "maintain
friendly relations with tribes with whom the Huron traded." The
Huron were well aware that "no tribal organisation and no
confederacy could survive if internal blood feuds went unchecked.
One of the basic functions of the confederacy was to eliminate such
feuds ... indeed, between Huron, they were regarded as a more
reprehensible crime than murder itself."(46)

The above evidence shows that it is simply not true to
assert that in the absence of a state, internecine conflict
immediately breaks out. What the historical and anthropological
records actually reveal - anticipating the computer studies of
Robert Axelrod - is that when people are left to their own devices
what emerges is not a Hobbesian war of all against all, but
cooperation.(47)

C. Objective Law

The most crucial aspect of the case for monopoly government as
advanced by Ayn Rand, is the assertion or implication that objective
law is not possible without it. Since anybody ruled by law must
desire their master to be non-arbitrary, just, and impartial - i.e.
objective - plainly the assertion that objective law can only be
created by a monopoly government is going to carry great weight.

Yet the assertion is false. We have just seen compelling evidence
that objective law can and does arise without government. Just as
'spontaneous order' arises in economic life, so spontaneous or
'customary' law arises in social life. But there is nothing
subjective about customary law. It is every bit as
objective as the products of legislatures.

Another compelling example cited by Bruce Benson is the Law Merchant
of medieval commerce. This arose spontaneously to facilitate trade
when Europe was emerging from the 'Dark Ages' and still forms the
bedrock of modern commercial law. The Lex mercatoria was
private, created by the merchants themselves, yet was universal,
being recognised all over Europe and beyond. It was extremely
efficient and cheap to run, and had its own courts with their own
rapid and informal procedures. Rulings were followed without
question because the judges were merchants themselves - who knew
intimately what plaintiff and defendant were arguing about. Besides,
it was in the interest of the courts and everybody else that
judgments be reasonable and just.

A defendant was of course free to ignore an unfavorable ruling, the
court had no power to enforce. But to outlaw oneself in this manner
was to put oneself out of business, for nobody traded with merchants
who disrespected the merchants' own law. Compliance was thus
achieved without coercion, perhaps the most vital lesson the
Law Merchant has to teach.

The Law Merchant's success was due to its objectivity. It was
simple, clear, confined to essentials and, its raison
d'être, was a practical requirement of trade. It arose
because merchants needed independent arbitration, and continued
because it performed that service efficiently. Yet it was created
and sustained voluntarily - without any involvement from government
- and functioned effectively for centuries without costing
a penny in tax. Although later submerged in most countries by the
growing power of the state, the Law Merchant lives on today in the
underlying principles of the (non-state) law which guides
international trade.

The history of the Law Merchant demolishes the notion that
state-created law is a prerequisite for the free market. Prior to
1600 or so, commercial and contract law was entirely private - and
vastly cheaper and more efficient for being so. In Bruce Benson's
words, the spontaneous generation of the Law Merchant "shatters the
myth that government must define and enforce 'the rules of the
game'."(48) Equally, the well-documented existence of customary law
societies all over the world - in which law-generation, policing and
justice were carried out effectively without government - shatters
the myth that only state monopolies can create objective law.

It might be objected that I am relying on work published after
Rand's death and hence am being completely unfair. That would only
be true if Bruce Benson's book were the sole source for such
material, which is not the case. Spencer, Spooner, Oppenheimer,
Nock, Lane and other critics of the state all wrote long before Rand
composed her essay on government. (Spencer's The Man versus the
State was actually 'recommended reading' at the Nathaniel
Branden Institute, which promoted Rand's ideas, with her approval,
until 1968.) Similarly, students of customary law such as Friedman,
Rothbard and the Tannehills, and anthropologists such as Clastres
and Trigger, all published their work well prior to Rand's
retirement from active intellectual life. She could have been, and
should have been, better informed.

Furthermore, Rand studied history in St Petersburg, and must surely
have known of the medieval Hanseatic League, which dominated trade
in the Baltic, and whose trading was governed by private mercantile
law. She must also have studied the transition in Europe from
customary to authoritarian law which occurred from the 10th Century
onwards. The medieval era has always been important in the history
syllabus and would have been particularly so in Russia under the
Soviets, the rise and fall of feudalism being integral to the
Marxist thesis.

To conclude this section, it must also be averred that the
historical record hardly supports the contention that monopoly
government does produce objective law. Whether one thinks
of John Locke's strictures on 17th Century lawyers; or the spurious
18th Century doctrine of the Sovereignty of Parliament; or the
despairing 19th Century cry "The law is an ass" immortalised by
Dickens in Bleak House; or the labyrinthine 6000 pages of
the 20th Century 'IRS Code', the US tax law; or one of Rand's own
favourite targets - the manifestly unjust and self-contradictory US
Anti-Trust Laws: history seems rather to show that much, if not
most, state-made law is and always has been the opposite of
objective.

Nor is state-provided justice any better. One could cite a thousand
examples of judicial perversity. But just one will have to suffice
here. In the 1997 Woodward v. Massachusetts case, Judge
Hiller Zobel approvingly quoted John Adams to the effect that the
law is "inflexible, inexorable and deaf," then informed the world:
"evidence is evidence if the jurors believe it; what they choose not
to believe is not evidence."(49) I have not come across a better
illustration of outright subjectivity entrenched in a state-made
legal system.

We can see from the above brief review that the basic problem with
customary law is not any want of objectivity, but rather the lack of
objectivity of those who disparage or ignore it. Brought up in the
tradition that 'law is made by government', and swaddled from cradle
to grave in state-made, fiat law, supporters of monopoly government
assume that objective law can only be made by government.
As Nock put it: "There appears to be a curious difficulty about
exercising reflective thought upon the actual nature of an
institution into which one was born and one's ancestors were
born."(50)

But in point of historical fact, government is a newcomer. Most laws
of any true benefit in use today are merely formalisations or
logical extensions of customs or customary laws which existed long
before the legislatures which enacted the modern fiat versions.

Law was invented prior to government. The state has merely
expropriated the law, and has only gradually succeeded in
creating the monopoly on law-making and law enforcement which it now
claims as its discovery and birthright.

D. The Grim Tale of State Monopoly

All of which brings us back to the problem we started with, the
monopoly status which Rand and its other proponents claim 'limited'
government must have.

Many fine minds have devoted huge efforts to detailing the
devastating effects of government monopolies. Rand was aware of this
and enthusiastically endorsed the work of such thinkers as Frederick
Bastiat, Ludwig von Mises, Henry Haslitt and others. But when one
sees the havoc government monopolies have wrought in the economic
sphere, is it not unduly optimistic to expect them to be efficient
in any sphere?

When one then surveys the domains over which Rand claimed government
should have exclusive control - law-making, courts, police and
defence - the litany of disasters makes one wonder what faith
inspired her. Taking the US alone, one could fill libraries with the
names of people, places, events and laws symbolic of crushed rights,
military adventurism, genocide, waste, murder, cruelty, stupidity,
duplicity, injustice, or what Thomas Sowell has called "passionate
delusion"(51) - all perpetrated by agents of government operating
under an exclusive license: Fallen Timbers, Sand Creek, Little
Bighorn, Jim Crow, Comstock, the Philippines, Selective Service,
Prohibition, Sacco and Vanzetti, Purple Codes and Pearl Harbour, the
USS Indianapolis, Yalta, Hiroshima, Social Security, Julius and
Ethel Rosenberg, Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Watergate, Rodney King,
Whitewater, Donald Scott, Ruby Ridge, and those endless
unconstitutional acronyms: BATF, DEA, EPA, FDA, HEW, HUD ....

Rose Wilder Lane put her finger on the core of the problem: "Being
absolute, and maintained by police force, a Government monopoly need
not please its customers."(52) And of course this applies whether
the monopoly is a railway network, an air traffic control system, a
post office, a currency, a legislature, a police service, a
judiciary, or any bureaucracy appointed to carry out a state
task.

Spencer, writing 100 years before Lane, described the result of the
state's exemption from the normal rule of business - that the
customer is king. He characterised the functioning of state
officials in the social sphere in his day as, "slow, stupid,
extravagant, unadaptive, corrupt and obstructive," and in the realm
of law as, "treacherous, cruel, and anxiously to be shunned."(53)
Who today can point to a state bureaucracy or state legal
system-anywhere in the world-where things are any different?

In one of the most apt uses of statistics ever, Spencer also pointed
out that four fifths of all British laws passed between 1236 and
1872 later had to be repealed as unworkable.(54) Imposed by persons
claiming the exclusive right to direct British life, the laws all
turned out to be asses.

There was evidently great hope that the system of checks and
balances built into the various American constitutions would resolve
the problem of monopoly in government. Alas, it failed. Bruce
Benson's The Enterprise of Law cites innumerable examples
of corruption, inefficiency and stifling of improvement in every
branch and level of government in the USA, whether municipal,
county, state or federal. The problems have been there since before
1776 and persist despite huge efforts by reformers to root them out.
Newspapers and one's own experience in Britain and Europe tell the
same story daily on this side of the Atlantic.

Corruption and inefficiency have always existed in government. They
always will. Government is force. Thus government service tends to
attract those of lower self-esteem (power seekers) as well as the
less scrupulous and the less able. Thereafter, the exercise of
unwarranted power, lack of competition, absence of personal
financial responsibility, and the insular, self-serving nature of
bureaucratic life, tend to eat away the moral fibre of even the most
honest officials.

For citizens who have had legal or economic monopolies foisted upon
them, government power usually resolves itself into the withholding
or granting of permissions. Obviously, those who need to get round
these obstacles, or who seek to exploit them, will resort to
whatever is necessary to do so successfully. Corruption is the
inevitable result. And since competing with government is forbidden,
inefficiency is corruption's steadfast companion in crime.

The uniformly awful record of state monopolies is too well known to
require further elaboration. One need do no more than draw attention
to it as one of the most serious objections to 'limited government.'
As long as the providers of any service do not have to
please their customers, as long as they hold a monopoly, corruption
and inefficiency will bloom - as persistently, hardily and
perennially as the ugliest weeds.

Advocates of limited monopoly government have a great tradition of
philosophical debate, heroic deeds, and revered Founding Fathers to
fall back on. But no amount of flag-waving can eradicate the
historical fact that the only product of government monopolies,
whether in commerce or in justice, has been "the law's delay" and
"the insolence of office." State monopolies always have, and always
will, hold back human progress like cannonballs shackled to the legs
of slaves.

The solution is obvious: expose all the services now
provided by government to competition.(55) Thus arguments for
continuing the state's 'monopoly on the use of force' must be very
powerful indeed. I have shown that those provided by Ayn Rand are
invalid or inadequate. If better ones exist, I hope someone will
point them out.

THREE: CONSISTENCY PROBLEMS

One of Rand's major claims about her philosophy, and one of the
facets for which it is most admired, is logical consistency.
Objectivism begins with solid metaphysical foundations in reality
and continues with impressive logic through an epistemology of
reason and an ethics of rational self-interest to a conclusion in
laissez-faire capitalism. Unfortunately, this logical structure does
not extend to Rand's political thought: there are serious
inconsistencies between her politics and the rest of her
philosophy.

A. The Malevolent View of Mankind

Rand advocated an ethics of rational self-interest and upheld the
essentially benevolent nature of the universe. Her Hobbesian
assumption that gang warfare would ensue in the absence of a state
monopoly on force hardly inspires confidence in these viewpoints.

Rand consistently maintained that "There are no conflicts of
interest among men of goodwill." The historical record shows that
she was right. Wherever and whenever people have been left free,
they have tended to be or to become benevolent and reasonable
towards each other, not violent.(56) A war of all against all, on
the other hand, assumes the complete irrationality of the
population. Alternatively, rule by a strongman(57) assumes a
complete lack of virtues such as independence and courage amongst
those ruled, and neither recognition nor acknowledgement of
individual rights by tyrant or by subject. There could be no room in
either of these societies for 'Objectivist Man.'

The Objectivist ideal is of men and women devoted to reason, purpose
and self-esteem; to rationality, productiveness and pride; to
honesty, independence, integrity, and justice. But people of this
kind have been found in all communities throughout history. Besides
being historically inaccurate, it is a grave injustice to maintain
that without a coercive central state they would have been instantly
at each others' throats.

Good people live peacefully and recognise each other's rights
because that is the rational, practical way to live. They are good
because they choose to be, not because someone else keeps them in
order. In modern society 99% of people neither steal nor murder. But
they do not refrain from such acts out of fear of the state. They
refrain because they wish to live moral lives. While they do know
that punishment and ostracism would follow if they did commit
violent crimes, that is not their incentive. They prefer honesty and
integrity to taking that which is not theirs. Human conviction
is vastly more powerful than any state.

The fact is that the universe is actually benevolent, and
those who are not coerced generally respond in kind. An assumption
of mayhem ensuing in the absence of government is completely counter
to a benevolent view of mankind. It also implies the vanity of any
hope that Objectivism might prevail. Most notably of all, perhaps,
the assumption clashes horribly with Rand's own depiction of an
ideal society - Galt's Gulch in Atlas Shrugged - which was
a haven with neither government nor dispute.

The great frightener the state holds up to us is après moi le
déluge - that we are doomed without it. Historically,
this is nonsense pure and simple: law and order everywhere emerged
spontaneously, with no involvement by the state. It is unfortunate
that Rand did not recognise this truth. For by scorning anarchism
she encouraged people to believe the state's propaganda. She ought
rather to have been first to acknowledge the overwhelming historical
and contemporary evidence that it is not freedom which corrupts, but
power.

B. Conflicts with the Objectivist Ethics

The Objectivist ethics is a standard-based morality.(58) It
defines principles or standards which act as guides for individual
judgment. Laws made by governments, in contrast, are clear examples
of, or analogous to, rule-based systems of ethics - such as
Christianity, Kantianism or Utilitarianism - which Objectivism
rejects.

State-made laws are rules made by some men demanding the obedience
of others. A law is a command backed by the willingness to use
force. "Command is the growl of coercion waiting in ambush" as
Spencer so pithily put it.(59) State-made law appeals not to reason,
but to fear.

A standard, on the other hand, is derived by reflection from the
facts of reality, and is reaffirmed generation after generation
because it conforms to the common experience and common sense of
mankind.

A standard is available to anybody at any time and is employed
voluntarily and individually. Its appeal is to reason, its
acceptance comes through persuasion. Freely accepted rational
standards are the hallmarks of civilization. They are the antithesis
of state-made law.

That laws may be based on rational standards offers no way out here.
If people are free by right, employing civilized standards is up to
each individual person. It can never be the right of some one group
of people to judge for the rest and thereafter to enforce their
judgments 'by law'.

It is not only in the general sense of espousing standards rather
than rules that Objectivism conflicts with a government monopoly on
law. We have already seen that a coercive monopoly conflicts with
individual rights. Such a monopoly also conflicts with particular
Objectivist virtues such as independence and justice. One cannot
rationally uphold independent judgment as a virtue, then maintain
that in vital areas of human life ordinary people are not fit to
judge. Similarly, one cannot extol the virtue of justice - treating
people on merit - while denying everyone the right to exercise
justice in the area where it matters most, self-defense. Nor does
Rand's trader principle fare well under limited government. How does
"a free, voluntary, unforced, uncoerced exchange"(60) take place in
the face of a coercive monopoly on the law of contracts?

C. Reason, Persuasion and Force

Setting up and maintaining a monopoly government is an employment of
force to resolve human problems: a monopoly on law-making and law
enforcement is coercive. In George Washington's words: "Government
is not reason, government is not persuasion, government is force
..."(61)

Yet Objectivism upholds reason as man's highest value. Reason
abjures the use of force. The method of reason is persuasion.
Therefore to employ force is to abandon reason.

We thus face another contradiction. But we know that contradictions
cannot exist. The choice is stark: either abandon monopoly
government or abandon reason.

The consequences of admitting force into human affairs are
catastrophic. Once you concede the principle, once you allow
coercion in one area, you cannot deny it in others. There is no
stopping it. Pandora's box is opened, the cat is out of the bag. And
that has been the story throughout history. Whenever a coercive
state has taken over a society, or when it has been granted (by
default or explicitly) the right to use force in, or to monopolize,
any one area of life, it has gradually pushed its way into or taken
over all others.

The logic is irresistible. Abandon reason, introduce the premise
that it is permissible to initiate force sometimes, and
force will eventually be used at all times. Let a coercive
state get one foot in the door, and it gradually takes over the
whole house.

The classic example is North America. When Europeans first landed in
what is now the United States, there was no state. Today, there is
not one single aspect of American life which remains untouched by
state intrusion.(62)

The clearest possible logical chain leads directly from the Norman
Conquest - and the Norman state's subsequent suppression of
Anglo-Saxon customary law(63) - to the actual chains which fetter
Americans today: the dictatorial acts now being committed, in the
name of justice, by the uncountable, and unaccountable, agencies of
the US state.

Ayn Rand was a great admirer of the US Constitution. For many years
so was I: it was the noblest attempt in history to cage and chain
the beast of force. But the beast broke its shackles almost
immediately and with little difficulty. Aided and abetted by the
morality of altruism, the beast has since proceeded to devour, at an
ever-increasing rate, both the Constitution so painstakingly
designed to restrain it and the individual rights which that
hallowed but helpless document was intended to protect.

The premise that coercive monopoly, i.e. force, is justifiable in
any one part of life, leads inexorably to a total state - even when
the purpose of the monopoly is to protect individual rights. History
and logic demonstrate beyond question that government cannot be
limited. Any limited state power eventually becomes
unlimited.

In sum, Objectivism, advocating reason; a standard-based ethics;
virtues such as independence and justice; inalienable individual
rights; and laissez-faire capitalism, cannot consistently support a
state monopoly on the use of force.

POSTSCRIPT

Loyalty to Rand made reaching the above conclusion a long and
hesitant process. My interest in politics, my intellectual life
itself, began with Rand, in 1963. But doubts about limited
government surfaced early. The first occurred when reading Thomas
Jefferson at university. His emphasis on self government
seemed almost to preclude external forms of control. Rand's
'monopoly on the use of force' also clashed with all those checks
and balances I was learning about. Surely they were intended to
prevent monopoly?

Some years later, about 1970, while reading the journals of Samuel
Champlain and other explorers of North America, I was struck, as
they were, by the great contentment of the aborigines, in most of
whose societies respect for individual rights thrived despite a
complete absence of government. Anarchism suddenly lost some of its
anarchic connotations.

Later still, during the 1980s, in the course of devising a programme
for limiting government in the UK, I began to see more clearly the
weaknesses of the minimal state position, particularly vis-à-vis its
monopoly status. However I wasn't yet ready to abandon 'minarchy,'
so I sidestepped, or perhaps evaded, my own acknowledgement of the
logical strength of the anarchist case: "... if one is setting out
to control government, it must be admitted that the most effective
method is to dispense with government entirely."(64)

Then, in 1993, a friend, Kevin McFarlane, to whom I shall always be
indebted, urged me to read Morris and Linda Tannehill's The
Market for Liberty. This, while highly abstract and at first
sight not fully convincing, did at least present a consistent
argument for anarcho-capitalism which revived my earlier doubts
about limited government.

Kevin next lent me Bruce Benson's The Enterprise of Law.
That remarkable book had something of the effect that Rand had had
on me thirty years before. Like Cortez in Keats's poem, I found
myself staring at a vast, new, apolitical horizon, my mind
filled with the "wild surmise" that a stateless society might indeed
be possible - even in our complex modern world.

The last piece of the puzzle fell into place in 1995, when I heard
about Murray Franck's essay on taxation.(65) Startled to find an
Objectivist in favour of taxes, I reread Ayn Rand's essay
on government. I was even more startled, and considerably dismayed,
when I noticed for the first time the flaws and empty spaces in her
arguments.

Yet, so what? Rand's mentor Aristotle said, "one swallow does not
make a summer,"(66) and even a whole flight of errors in one branch
of knowledge says nothing about a philosopher's work in others.
Aristotle made some pretty fair blunders himself; eg, over women,
slavery, evolution and astronomy. We might have been on Andromeda by
now if he hadn't. But he was still the greatest of the great
philosophers. Rand's errors in politics do nothing to invalidate the
rest of Objectivism, which in my judgment remains solid: it
works; both as a guide for living and - though far from
complete - technically as a philosophy, especially in its logical
integrity.

Nonetheless, everything I have read since 1993 - when the Tannehills
and Bruce Benson jolted me out of my dogmatic slumbers- and all the
facts and arguments presented in this paper, have convinced me that
for its logical structure to be sustained from start to finish, the
political destination of Objectivism must be sought not among the
archives and marble monuments of the District of Columbia, but in
the ideal, yet-to-be-realised world of Galt 's Gulch.

Nicholas Dykes is a British-Canadian writer currently living in
England. He is the author of Fed up with Government?, the
manifesto for a putative British 'Libertarian Party,' and of A
Tangled Web of Guesses, a critical assessment of the philosophy
of Karl Popper. Anybody wishing to discuss aspects of this paper
privately can reach Nicholas at: oldnick@wbsnet.co.uk

NOTES

1. I am grateful to Roger Donway of The Objectivist Centre (formerly
The Institute for Objectivist Studies) who kept me informed of the
debate despite disagreement with my views. Since I refer only
briefly to Objectivism L, I should point out that the arguments in
this essay were developed before their debate began. Also, I
followed only the first month, during which postings focussed on
topics I do not address.

2. John Hospers, Libertarianism (Santa Barbara: Reason
Press, 1971), p. 417ff, and Anarchy or Limited Government?
(San Francisco: Gutenberg, 1976); Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State
and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), "the minimal state is
inspiring as well as right," p. ix; Tibor Machan, Human Rights
and Human Liberties (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1975) and
Individuals and Their Rights (Lasalle, Ill: Open Court,
1989). For unpersuasive discussions of anarchy v. minarchy
see Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn
Rand (New York: Dutton, 1991), Ch. 10, and Robert James
Bidinotto "The Contradiction in Anarchism," Full Context
(Objectivist Club of Michigan, Troy, Michigan), May & June 1994.

3. See Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness [VOS] (New York:
New American Library, 1968). Numbers in brackets refer to the
current paperback edition.

6. "Objectivism and the State: An Open Letter to Ayn Rand";
Liberty against Power: Essays by Roy A. Childs, Jr (San
Francisco: Fox & Wilkes, 1994), p. 146; original in italics. Childs'
essay was followed in 1970 by two brilliant treatises on anarchism,
Morris and Linda Tannehill's The Market for Liberty and
Murray Rothbard's Power and Market.

7. I have not been able to find Rand's reaction to Childs' letter,
but I have a distinct recollection of reading it, I think in The
Objectivist, c.1968.

8. 23 October 1997; quoted with permission. Ronald Merrill's early
death saddened me greatly. He was a sharp thinker and an
entertaining writer whose book The Ideas of Ayn Rand
(Lasalle, Ill: Open Court, 1991) helped me to develop a more
critical approach to Rand.

9. Chris Tame, Director of the UK Libertarian Alliance, informs me
that no advocate of anarcho-capitalism has referred to 'competing
governments'. Since the phrase is confusing and self-contradictory,
Rand may have employed it to disparage.

10. Rand's rejection of anarchism may stem from experiences during
the collapse of Czarist Russia. She often went in fear of her life,
and at age 13 was robbed in the dark at gunpoint by a bandit gang.
See Barbara Branden, The Passion of Ayn Rand (New York:
Doubleday, 1986), p. 30.

31. "Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a
common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition
which is called war; and such a war as is of every man, against
every man .... In such condition there is no place for industry ...
no culture of the earth ... no arts; no letters; no society; and
which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death;
and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Edited by Michael Oakeshott
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1946), p. 82.

35. David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom (New Rochelle
NY: Arlington House, 1973), Appendix to 3rd Edn. R. J. Bidinotto, op
cit, scorns Icelandic anarchism for being unable to resist Norwegian
invasion, a criticism which implies might is right. Bill Stoddard
(objectivisml@cornell.edu, 18 Dec 1997) argues that medieval
Iceland's court system was in fact a monopoly and thus the island
did have a state, albeit minimal. This may overlook the fact that
sole suppliers arise naturally under freedom, the most able supplier
winning the competition for the consumers' favour. (Eg, as has
happened with many other standards, the simplicity of the metric
system is gradually eliminating British Imperial measure.) There is
every reason to believe that in a completely free society, there
would eventually be one code of justice, worldwide. The Law Merchant
has already shown the way.

47. Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (London:
Penguin, 1990): "Finally, no central authority is needed:
co-operation based on reciprocity can be self-policing" p. 174. It
is, in fact, the history of government which is replete
with gang warfare; a reality ignored by writers like R. J.
Bidinotto, op cit, who attempt to link anarchism to state-created
evils such as the Mafia, civil war in Bosnia, Ulster terrorism, or
inner city street gangs. The forecast of chaos sans state is a clear
case of psychological 'projection.'

48. The Enterprise of Law, op cit, p. 30. One influential
paper which argued this case-although written when the author was
still a student-is "The Necessity of Government" by David Kelley;
The Freeman, April 1974, p. 243-8.

55. I am indebted to Kevin McFarlane for the correction of an
ambiguity at this point in an earlier draft. US libertarian Sy Leon
has made the point eloquently: "Some of the things done by
government are essential, but it is not essential that they be done
by government." Quoted in a Laissez-Faire Books catalogue. Reference
lost.

56. The growth of human knowledge results in a tendency towards
peace and cooperation. The resurgence of the state since the
Renaissance-in essence a rerun of the Roman Empire-has, and is,
stifling this trend.

58. I am indebted to George H. Smith for clarifying this point. See
"Objectivism as a Religion," in Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other
Heresies (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991), p. 213ff. Dr
Merrill contradicted this, but his untimely death prevented me from
discussing it with him. See his "Objectivist Ethics: A Biological
Critique," Objectivity, (Chicago, Illinois), Vol 2, #5, p.
70.

61. Quoted by John Stossel, "Interview with John Stossel," Full
Context, January 1998, p. 4.

62. Exactly the same can be said of Canada, most of Central and
South America, Africa, and other large areas of the globe. In the
words of Russian historian Vasilii Klyuchevski, "The State swells
up; the people diminish." Quoted by James J. Martin, "Introduction,"
No Treason, op cit, p. 2.

63. Brilliantly summarised in Benson, op cit, p. 43ff. The forts
built by the US Army in native American lands are exactly analogous
to the castles built by William the Conqueror and his 'armed
banditti.'

64. Nicholas Dykes, Fed Up With Government? The Manifesto of the
Reform Party (Hereford, UK: Four Nations, 1991), p. 16.